In March 2011, I posted on the proposed 2012 tax assessments for the 900-plus tax parcels that I track as Near Southeast properties, which valued the neighborhood at just a teensy bit under $6 billion ($5.994B). But there's a reason those are just "proposed": property owners need a chance to prostrate themselves before the city to try to get their assessments revised. In addition, new properties come onto the rolls during the year as projects get completed.

UPDATE: The new span will indeed open on Saturday, Jan. 7, as confirmed Thursday evening by a DDOT tweet. Watch for detours during the day as they make the switch.

Hope everyone has had a good holiday season, and made it into the New Year relatively unscathed. I took some blog vacation time myself, but while it's looked like pure slacking, I've actually been hard at work on my 2012 State of the Hood roundup, which will be coming tomorrow.

If you're looking for an excuse to have a celebration (and who isn't in the long, seven-day slog between Christmas and New Year's), you can raise a glass on Wednesday to the 20th birthday of the Waterfront, Navy Yard, and Anacostia Metro stations, which opened on Dec. 28, 1991.

On Wednesday and Thursday (Dec. 28 and 29), watch for closures on 11th Street SE between M and K between 5 am and 4 pm as workers install girders above the street as part of the new flyover connecting the 11th Street Bridges and the Southeast Freeway (or, as we probably need to start calling all of it, I-695). Here's the details, including where the detours will run.

It looks like Monument Realty's office building at 55 M Street may be close to getting its first retail tenant, as they have confirmed to me that they are in negotiations with Bank of America for a branch office in one of 55 M's ground-floor spaces, on top of the west entrance to the Navy Yard Metro station, just north of Nationals Park.

Just sent out by DDOT:

There's always a lot of interest in what retail establishments will be coming to the many spaces at The Yards, but developer Forest City Washington is usually pretty good at keeping its cards close to its vest on potential tenants until lease agreements are signed.

The District Department of Transportation will be hitting a big milestone in the $300 million, four-year project to build three new 11th Street Bridge spans, as the new inbound "freeway" span will be opening by Monday morning, Dec. 19.

Tidbitiest of tidbits:

I almost can't bring myself to write the words, but the owners of the Florida Rock site just south of Nationals Park have filed with the Zoning Commission for not only the previously reported plan to change the planned first phase office building to a residential one, but also to revisit parts of the site plan for the three subsequent phases. (For those of you versed in zoning speak, they are requesting to "revert Phases II, III, and IV to First Stage Approvals with modifications.")

The agenda for Monday's ANC 6D December meeting is now available (and actually posted on their web site, too!). My hopes for a pre-holiday pass from this have been dashed, though, since there are a number of Near Southeast items on the agenda:

* There was a "Wait, what?" moment on Tuesday when DCist reported that a velodrome would be coming in 2012 "in the shadow of Nationals Park in Southeast DC." I did some quick sleuthing, looking at the organization's web site and seeing Akridge as a partner, but I just couldn't place the design as being along Half Street. Then, thinking about how people so often can't get Southeast and Southwest straight when it comes to anything near the ballpark, I took a look at the Google Maps view of Akridge's Buzzard Point land at 1st and V SW, and Ta-Da! A pretty clear match.

Yes, it's time for another batch of updated construction photos. This is a tough stretch of year to take these--the sun never gets very high in the sky, so anything facing due south is about impossible to get without glare. And, for places like Canal Park, it's hard to even get some locations out of the shadows long enough to get a photo that you can decipher. But you can see (below left, and on the project page) a couple of shots of the progress on the park's pavilion where the Park Tavern restaurant will be housed, along with plenty of shots vaguely showing the other ongoing ground-level work. Meanwhile, at Capitol Quarter (below right), they continue to just zip right along, with framing now well underway on the north side of L and around up 4th, and prep work for foundations continuing in the project's final block, on the south side of L.

You know how I always like to say that something is expected to happen Any Minute Now? In the case of construction getting started on the southeast corner of 4th and M on the new residential/Teeter/retail building in The Yards, that's now actually a pretty true statement. On Thursday Forest City received the shoring/sheeting permit approval that the project has been waiting for, which will allow the start of digging at the site as soon as some other i's are dotted and t's are crossed.

In a conference room at Nationals Park on Wednesday night, a bevy of representatives from CSX, DDOT, and FHWA along with consultants galore showed the public for the first time a series of 12 "project concepts" for how to handle CSX's desire/need to expand the capacity of the 3,800-foot-long Virginia Avenue Tunnel that runs from 2nd to 12th Street SE.

Today the council's Subcommittee on Redistricting is holding a hearing (watch live!) on the proposals for new ANC and single-member district boundaries. Late on Monday night, proposed maps for all eight wards were posted, with the Ward 6 maps being exactly the ones that the Ward 6 Task Force submitted back in September. However, a Twitter discussion with Tommy Wells's chief of staff has indicated that the task force maps are not what Tommy forwarded to the subcommittee, and Charles Allen was nice enough to pass along the ANC 6D portion of Tommy's map, seen below on the left, alongside the task force's recommended map (both can be clicked to enlarge):